


california english

by brophigenia



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aquafresh Toothpaste, Blow Jobs, Brief mention of recreational drug use, I'm kidding, M/M, Masturbation, Nobody is Dead, and a political science major, and by 'dated' i mean 'been locked into a battle of wits and mutual pining and hookups with', gelato, i've dated a lot of political science majors, like so wonderful and yet so punchable, meet cute, noah THRIVED, noah being more, noah lived, noah's band is called the ghosties with the mosties, or am I?, pineapple is amazing on pizza you cowards, ps gansey is 19, skater rockstar noah czerny, there is no drama, they're literally all just like gansey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 12:00:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16764736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: It's a Tuesday, and Noah's in love.(AKA, the fic I have wanted to write for months and finally wrote. Surprise.)





	california english

**Author's Note:**

> you know the drill. goddess of trash, yadda yadda. have some WHOLESOME FUCKING CONTENT for once. no angst. no sads. no choking. just love.

_ *** _

_ i wanna make you happy _

_ i wanna make you feel alive _

_ let me make you happy  _

_ i wanna make you feel alive _

_ *** _

He wakes up at eleven thirty and groans aloud, a sound not angry or dreading but still horrified. Gleeful and terrorized, stomach sloshy with all the beer he’d drank the night before. 

He rolls out of bed— no, out of mattress. There is no bed. There is a two thousand dollar posturepedic king size mattress on the floor, half of its fitted sheet torn off and prone to wrapping around him. He doesn’t fix it because it’s like the sheets are trying to hug him as he sleeps. Pretty touching, when you sit and think about it. Especially if you smoke a bowl before you sit and think about it. Who is he to oppress that kind of love from his sheets? 

He’s Noah Czerny, and he’s hungover, and he’s twenty four, and he’s alive. 

He’s Noah Czerny, and he’s out of toothpaste, so after he gamely vomits up all of last night’s beer that he doesn’t piss out, he puts on his shoes and decides to go to the corner store. 

Everything that happens as a result of his running out of toothpaste is a matter of kismet. 

Destiny. Fate. 

All of that. 

***

Noah has like, a Thing. 

Noah Czerny does not, as a rule, have Things about very many things in life. He’s very relaxed. He has  _ c’est la vie  _ tattooed in Helvetica on his lower back. Noah Czerny is  _ zen.  _

But he has a Thing. About toothpaste. 

Noah likes to brush his teeth with Aquafresh. The striped kind. It’s like, the perfect toothpaste. Minty without being artificial. Cheerfully packaged without trying too hard. Not filmy. It doesn’t leave a gross residue on the corners of his lips. 

So, he likes Aquafresh. No problem. Aquafresh is sold everywhere. 

Except for the corner store directly across from his apartment. And the  _ other  _ corner store directly across from his apartment. And the corner store down the block. 

Before he knows it, Noah is across town at a Happy Dollar on the very fringes of the university’s campus. There are a lot of hungover people in line buying a random assortment of candy, soda, hot sauce, and V8. Everyone has their own foolproof hangover cure. Noah knows the truth, though. You’ve gotta puke it up. One good yak, and you’ll be fine. Except for the light sensitivity. But Noah has some really expensive sunglasses to counter that, so he doesn’t worry over it too much. 

So Noah is in line at the Happy Dollar wearing last night’s denim cutoffs and a mostly-clean cutout advertising this topless bar that he and the boys had played at years ago now, when they were still too young to drink. His bare feet are jammed into his unlaced vans. There’s a hole in the right one. He wriggles his big toe and watches it wave at him through the hole. 

But he has his toothpaste  _ (six  _ tubes, take that, capitalism!) and he decides to impulse buy a pen with a wriggling monster head on the end. He’s sure he can use it. He writes checks. Sometimes. 

He’ll mail it to his sister, maybe. If he can find his stamps. And remember where the post office is located. 

As his items are being rung up, Noah vaguely ponders getting a personal assistant. When he swipes his AmEx, he decides he probably shouldn’t. He wouldn’t inflict that on anybody. 

So he’s got his toothpaste. And he’s got his jiggly monster pen. They’re in his arms, because he read this Instagram caption a couple days ago on this super sad picture of this sweet sea turtle tangled up in a plastic bag and he’d decided then and there that he was never using plastic again. He’d put his foot down. 

Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to purchase any reusable bags, and even if he  _ had _ remembered to purchase reusable bags, he most certainly would have forgotten to bring them with him to the store. 

(Maybe he can have all his shit delivered? Isn’t that a thing? Could he get an Uber driver to grocery shop for him with reusable bags and then bring those groceries to his apartment in the reusable bags?) 

So he’s juggling six tubes of Aquafresh and a jiggly monster novelty pen, right, and he walks right out and sees a terrible travesty occurring. 

A tragedy, even. Something obscene. Something horrible. 

Someone  _ throwing away an entire untouched gelato.  _

“Don’t throw it away!” He calls out, jogging over to the attempted gelato-waster, scandalized. “Dude!” 

He’s so focused on saving the gelato, which is reddish pink with curls of lemon zest mixed in and perched on a very handsome waffle cone, that he doesn’t even notice the arm attached to it. Doesn’t notice the almost-gelato-destroyer. 

(Listen, Noah fucking  _ loves  _ gelato. He’s not sure why there’s a Lotto Gelato store right next to a Happy Dollar and an Ace Hardware, but he’s not gonna complain. Suburban diversification. Whatever. He’s sure not gonna complain in the form of a protest on the very existence of gelato, tossing a two-scoop perfection away like so much trash.) 

Doesn’t notice, until he fucking  _ notices.  _ And by then it’s too late to balk, too late to swoon and skate away, staring so hard over his shoulder he runs into a street sign and breaks his collarbone. 

(That’s only happened like, once.) 

So the Gelato Destroyer, he’s like. A smokeshow. A dime. A beauty to rival that of the most iconic sex symbols of the world— Michelangelo's  _ David,  _ Marilyn Monroe, young Sean Connery, Pamela Anderson, that one hot guy who worked at the San Antonio Mellow Mushroom and gave Noah extra Parmesan packets last time he was going through on tour. 

“Pardon me?” Gelato Destroyer asks in this like,  _ super hot  _ voice. Kind of like a sexy college professor. Maybe. Noah never actually went to college, so like, he’s not  _ sure.  _ But he feels like he’s seen enough porn to be able to make these kinds of comparisons. 

“Don’t throw it away,” he repeats, almost a whisper, and wants to follow it up with  _ can I eat this off your stomach?  _ but he’s had enough PR media training to know that that’s like, a no go. Party foul. Creepy. Worthy of a #metoo tweet. 

“Oh,” Gelato Destroyer says, eyes lighting up with understanding. He smiles genially, all wow-white teeth (Noah wonders what kind of toothpaste  _ he  _ uses) and laughs, nodding towards his companion, a guy who is  _ also  _ smoking hot but not, like, the future Ex-Mr. Czerny. Or maybe not even  _ Ex.  _ Noah wonders if a marriage based on looks is too Hollywood. “I don’t even  _ like  _ gelato, I know it’s such a waste, it’s just… my friend admires the young lady who works here on morning shifts, and won’t go in by himself and just  _ talk  _ to her…” Gelato Destroyer shrugs in a  _ you know how it is  _ kind of way. 

Noah finds himself nodding dumbly, though he’s never actually stalked someone’s place of work pining via the purchase of tasty frozen treats. Noah doesn’t usually  _ pine.  _ He usually just smiles and says  _ you wanna?  _ and then has a rousing night of fun before moving on to the next object of his (admittedly short-spanned) desire. 

“But here, of course you can—“ Gelato Destroyer proffers the waffle cone and Noah goes to take it before realizing that his hands are full of toothpaste and novelty pens. “Oh, dear. Here, you can—“ and then Gelato Destroyer pulls out a  _ folded up reusable shopping bag  _ from the pocket of his chinos.  __

Noah’s jaw drops. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He gets a little sweaty. 

Well, he was already a little sweaty. It’s 89 degrees and climbing. There’s a reason he’s as naked as is decent in a public place on a Sunday morning. 

“Marry me,” he blurts, and Gelato Destroyer laughs merrily as he holds the bag open for Noah to deposit his Aquafresh and novelty pen inside of. He’s got very nice forearms. Very muscle. Much tan. Noah wants to  _ lick  _ him. 

Gelato Destroyer’s friend snickers. He might actually be filming the whole thing on his phone. Noah hopes he doesn’t get put on YouTube acting like a fool. Shaun will definitely comment on it and say something mean, and Noah  _ really  _ doesn’t have the patience to deal with Shaun White’s cyberbullying.  _ Zen  _ does not equal  _ all-out Twitter war.  _

Gelato Destroyer only smiles. Noah take a giant bite out of the gelato so he doesn’t comment on how when he smiles his eyes get all squinchy and it’s really really hot. He gets immediate brain freeze, but it’s worth it. 

“I’m Gansey,” Gelato Destroyer says. “This is Henry.” Henry waves, not taking his eyes off of the screen of his phone. Noah kicks his skateboard back and forth beneath his foot, a restless habit, catching it alternately with his heel and toe. Gelat—  _ Gansey’s  _ eyes are caught by the motion. 

“Noah,” Noah says, jerking his chin like  _ sup?  _ because he’s been surrounded by stoned pro skateboarders and roadies too long. He wasn’t properly socialized in the wild. 

“So, uh, you skateboard?” Gansey asks, clumsily enough that Noah’s about 99.7% sure he’s never been on a board a day in his life. It’s cute. He tries to picture it, Gansey in chinos and that pink polo shirt trying to take a dip on a ramp. 

Noah goes to grin and then remembers he hasn’t brushed his teeth yet this morning. He licks a bit of gelato off of the corner of his lips before answering. “Yeah, I skate sometimes,” he manages, trying not to come off as  _ weird.  _ Or like, how some semi-famous people come off when non-famous people don’t know who they are. Gansey definitely doesn’t look like the type to follow pro skating. He also doesn’t seem like he’s a big fan of indie fusion alt rock. 

“Cool,” Gansey says. Behind him, Henry turns his phone around briefly to face himself and mouths  _ cool?  _ incredulously around a shit-eating grin. He goes back to filming the two of them almost immediately, sinking down into a squat to get them from a different angle. 

“Yep,” Noah says, popping the  _ p,  _ and finishes off the waffle cone in one big bite. Did he eat that too fast? He worries briefly that he ate it too fast, but then realizes he doesn’t actually care if he ate it  _ too fast  _ or not. Better that Gansey finds out about his incorrigible lust for gelato  _ now,  _ rather than after they’ve been married twelve years and have a bunch of puppies. 

“I have never been so entertained.” Henry whispers loudly to his phone. 

“So, uh—“ 

“Hey, listen—“ 

They both laugh awkwardly, tripping over each other’s attempts at conversation. 

“You wanna?” Noah asks, and doesn’t grin his usual sex-grin because he’s afraid his teeth look gross without being brushed his morning. Any worry that this affects the effectiveness of his approach is quickly dashed by the way Gansey’s cheeks pinken. It’s a pretty color. Noah would like to see more of it. 

“I’m, uh, yeah. Yes. Yes, sure, absolutely.” Gansey speaks as if he’s speaking to a board of directors meeting, nodding firmly like he’s closing a business deal. 

“Okay,” Noah says, nodding too because it looks like a good idea. Really, like,  _ decided.  _ Responsible. Adultish. 

He wonders how old Gansey is. Younger than him, definitely, except he’s wearing boat shoes and Noah’s never seen anybody who wasn’t a drunk frat boy or a sixty-seven year old grandpa wear boat shoes. 

“Great! Let’s go!” Gansey says, and starts striding across the parking lot. He stops when he reaches its edge, and turns. “Upon further consideration, you should probably lead the way.” 

Noah hides his grin by ducking his head. He wriggles his toe again, framed by faded and frayed yellow cotton. He pushes off with his back foot and rolls over. “Just follow me,” he instructs. 

Behind them, Henry is  _ shrieking _ in laughter. “Did you  _ see that?  _ Oh my god, Dick Gansey, you  _ dog!”  _

***

So, Gansey is a really  _ really  _ good kisser. He’s a really really good kisser, and he carried Noah’s bag all the way back to the apartment like a fucking  _ gentleman  _ and didn’t get weirded out when Noah called a timeout to brush his teeth and Noah’s gonna choke on his dick because Gansey deserves nice things. It’s something so very self-evident about Gansey that it’s like Noah’s known it his whole life, despite not knowing Gansey longer than an hour. 

“Can I suck your cock?” He asks, dragging his shirt over his head and missing the poleaxed look that accompanies Gansey’s dry-mouthed attempts at enthusiastic verbal consent. 

“That’s a big bruise,” Gansey points out, nonsensically, talking about the gnarly purple expanse of his right rib cage from where he took a tumble in the half-pipe last week, and then only groans into Noah’s mouth when he goes in for some more of that sweet, sweet mack. 

He leads Gansey to the bedroom and wants to high five the dude for not saying what he’s obviously, from the look on his face, thinking about the fact that Noah has a mattress on the floor made up with Transformers sheets. 

(It took a long time to find king-size Transformers sheets; Noah feels like they deserve more reverence than they get, especially since they’re so snuggle-happy.) 

He tears Gansey’s polo shirt over his head instead, knocks him on his back so that he’s got easy access to the buttons on his chino shorts. They’re pretty sexy. Gansey’s showing more thigh than most sorority girls. The hair on his legs is very blonde. 

“Nice,” Noah says when Gansey’s black boxer briefs are revealed, showing his appreciation for Gansey’s abs with his tongue. He’s got an oral fixation, it’s another of his sparse number of Things— Noah likes to get his mouth on pretty things. 

Gansey’s cock definitely falls under that category, when he peels down those sweat-soaked boxer briefs and it bobs out into the air, smacking wetly onto Gansey’s aforementioned  _ stellar  _ abs. 

Noah’s actually, 100% positive that he’s never seen such a pretty dick. He tells Gansey so. 

“No, really,” he says, not taking his eyes off of it. “You could be a penis model, bro.” Gansey groans, high and thin, incredulous. Needy.  _ Neglected.  _ Oh, right. “Oh, right. Sorry dude. Just lay there, I’ll do all the work.” 

Noah doesn’t wanna brag, but there’s definite advantages to being both a globetrotting athlete rockstar and a bit of a wanton slut— he’s kind of  _ really good  _ at giving head. Has been, in fact, ever since he was sixteen and still back at Aglionby. He takes a half second to fondly reminisce on getting his throat reamed out in the front seat of his old cherry-red Mustang before putting all his attention on Gansey and his ultra-pretty dick. 

Gansey, for his part, doesn’t try to pull Noah’s hair or buck his hips or anything. He’s a solid dude. Gorgeous and cute and considerate. Definite husband material. Noah pats him fondly on the defined cut of his hip and goes down that final inch, until his nose is buried in Gansey’s neatly-kept pubes, brown instead of the white-blonde of his leg- and arm-hairs. 

Gansey only moans his head off and covers his eyes with his hands like he’s overwhelmed. When he comes, it’s with a cry of  _ Noah!  _ and a rush of spunk down the back of Noah’s throat. 

“You must drink a lot of water,” Noah compliments, when he pulls back. “Have you heard about that pineapple thing?” 

Gansey groans something unintelligible and pulls Noah down into the cage of his arms, smearing their lips together in something that would probably be a kiss if Gansey’s limbs hadn’t turned into wet noodles and his brain into oatmeal. Yeah. Noah’s just that good. 

“Don’t worry, G, I got it,” he soothes, and jerks himself off all over Gansey’s wicked-fine stomach. Like  _ that’s  _ such a hardship, damn. 

He rolls off Gansey, lands on his back next to him. The room is quiet except for the sound of their panting breaths and the faint strains of Armenian flute music that Mrs. Grigoryan downstairs always blasts during her daily doggy-and-me yoga sessions. 

“Shit, I’m hungry,” Noah comments, scratching idly at his happy trail when his brain comes back online. “You want pizza? Thai? Pizza?” He’s already on his feet, walking towards the kitchen bare-ass naked. 

“Is that helvetica?” Gansey asks, sounding baffled yet charmed, and “do you have a shower I can use?” 

While he’s gone, Noah rifles through the stack of delivery menus in his refrigerator. He’s just decided on Marconi’s Pizzeria when Gansey reappears, hair damp and Noah’s favorite (read: only) towel wrapped around his waist. He looks good in Sonic the Hedgehog-patterned terry cloth. 

“There are a lot of gold medals in your bathroom.” Gansey observes, not-asking but keenly interested. “And I like the gold records you have in your laundry alcove.” 

“Thank you,” Noah says, and means it from the bottom of his heart. “What do you want on your pizza?” 

“Pineapple and ham, please,” Gansey says, and Noah is in love. 

“I am in love with you,” Noah says. “It is a Sunday, and I am in love. How fucking cool.” 

“It’s Tuesday,” Gansey corrects, trying to hide his blush and his pleased grin. 

“It is a Tuesday, and I am in love. How fucking cool.” Noah repeats, and calls Marconi’s while they smile at each other like freaks. 

**Author's Note:**

> follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


End file.
